CHAPTER XXVIII. I AM SILENCED
I rubbed the water out of my eyes, and saw the raven on the edge of a
huge stone basin. With the cold light of the dawn reflected from his
glossy plumage, he stood calmly looking down upon me. I lay on my back
in water, above which, leaning on my elbows, I just lifted my face. I
was in the basin of the large fountain constructed by my father in the
middle of the lawn. High over me glimmered the thick, steel-shiny stalk,
shooting, with a torrent uprush, a hundred feet into the air, to spread
in a blossom of foam.
Nettled at the coolness of the raven’s remark,
“You told me nothing!” I said.
“I told you to do nothing any one you distrusted asked you!”
“Tut! how was mortal to remember that?”
“You will not forget the consequences of having forgotten it!” replied
Mr. Raven, who stood leaning over the margin of the basin, and stretched
his hand across to me.
I took it, and was immediately beside him on the lawn, dripping and
streaming.
“You must change your clothes at once!” he said. “A wetting does not
signify where you come from--though at present such an accident is
unusual; here it has its inconveniences!”
He was again a raven, walking, with something stately in his step,
toward the house, the door of which stood open.
“I have not much to change!” I laughed; for I had flung aside my robe to
climb the tree.
“It is a long time since I moulted a feather!” said the raven.
In the house no one seemed awake. I went to my room, found a
dressing-gown, and descended to the library.
As I entered, the librarian came from the closet. I threw myself on a
couch. Mr. Raven drew a chair to my side and sat down. For a minute or
two neither spoke. I was the first to break the silence.
“What does it all mean?” I said.
“A good question!” he rejoined: “nobody knows what anything is; a man
can learn only what a thing means! Whether he do, depends on the use he
is making of it.”
“I have made no use of anything yet!”
“Not much; but you know the fact, and that is something! Most people
take more than a lifetime to learn that they have learned nothing, and
done less! At least you have not been without the desire to be of use!”
“I did want to do something for the children--the precious Little Ones,
I mean.”
“I know you did--and started the wrong way!”
“I did not know the right way.”
“That is true also--but you are to blame that you did not.”
“I am ready to believe whatever you tell me--as soon as I understand
what it means.”
“Had you accepted our invitation, you would have known the right way.
When a man will not act where he is, he must go far to find his work.”
“Indeed I have gone far, and got nowhere, for I have not found my work!
I left the children to learn how to serve them, and have only learned
the danger they are in.”
“When you were with them, you were where you could help them: you left
your work to look for it! It takes a wise man to know when to go away; a
fool may learn to go back at once!”
“Do you mean, sir, I could have done something for the Little Ones by
staying with them?”
“Could you teach them anything by leaving them?”
“No; but how could I teach them? I did not know how to begin. Besides,
they were far ahead of me!”
“That is true. But you were not a rod to measure them with! Certainly,
if they knew what you know, not to say what you might have known, they
would be ahead of you--out of sight ahead! but you saw they were not
growing--or growing so slowly that they had not yet developed the
idea of growing! they were even afraid of growing!--You had never seen
children remain children!”
“But surely I had no power to make them grow!”
“You might have removed some of the hindrances to their growing!”
“What are they? I do not know them. I did think perhaps it was the want
of water!”
“Of course it is! they have none to cry with!”
“I would gladly have kept them from requiring any for that purpose!”
“No doubt you would--the aim of all stupid philanthropists! Why, Mr.
Vane, but for the weeping in it, your world would never have become
worth saving! You confess you thought it might be water they wanted: why
did not you dig them a well or two?”
“That never entered my mind!”
“Not when the sounds of the waters under the earth entered your ears?”
“I believe it did once. But I was afraid of the giants for them. That
was what made me bear so much from the brutes myself!”
“Indeed you almost taught the noble little creatures to be afraid of the
stupid Bags! While they fed and comforted and worshipped you, all the
time you submitted to be the slave of bestial men! You gave the darlings
a seeming coward for their hero! A worse wrong you could hardly have
done them. They gave you their hearts; you owed them your soul!--You
might by this time have made the Bags hewers of wood and drawers of
water to the Little Ones!”
“I fear what you say is true, Mr. Raven! But indeed I was afraid that
more knowledge might prove an injury to them--render them less innocent,
less lovely.”
“They had given you no reason to harbour such a fear!”
“Is not a little knowledge a dangerous thing?”
“That is one of the pet falsehoods of your world! Is man’s greatest
knowledge more than a little? or is it therefore dangerous? The fancy
that knowledge is in itself a great thing, would make any degree of
knowledge more dangerous than any amount of ignorance. To know all
things would not be greatness.”
“At least it was for love of them, not from cowardice that I served the
giants!”
“Granted. But you ought to have served the Little Ones, not the giants!
You ought to have given the Little Ones water; then they would soon
have taught the giants their true position. In the meantime you could
yourself have made the giants cut down two-thirds of their coarse
fruit-trees to give room to the little delicate ones! You lost your
chance with the Lovers, Mr. Vane! You speculated about them instead of
helping them!”